


two wills (one mirror holding us dearer now)

by poiesis



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Post-Season/Series 01, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:23:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poiesis/pseuds/poiesis
Summary: "I don’t want to be around you.I don’t want to drink you in.I want to walk into the heart of youAnd never walk back out."Nico Alvarado, 'Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls'--post-series, eve waits for the inevitable





	1. one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big sexy thank you to bibi (@lesbiansansastark on tumblr) for food expertise and hypeman duties xo

When all is said and done, Niko lets her have the flat. There’s punishment in it somewhere, perhaps unintentionally—she hadn’t married a mean-spirited man. She’s acutely alone in what used to be their home, left to contend with the reality of what had transpired in that painfully chic apartment in Paris.

 

She’d recounted an altered version of events to Carolyn, leaving out the part where she trashed the place, leaving out the part where she'd confessed to Villanelle just how much she played on her mind. She definitely doesn't tell them how she'd nearly forgotten about the knife in her hand when the young woman had licked her lips and leant into her orbit, her eyes fixed on Eve's mouth.

 

There had been an alert put out to all Paris hospitals to notify MI6 of any blonde women presenting with a stab wound to the abdomen. Predictably, they got nothing.

 

She imagines Villanelle in some dingy veterinarian's office, knocked out on anaesthetic used for spaying and neutering. She imagines Villanelle with her long legs hanging over a too-short exam table, while a bribed surgeon undid everything that Eve had done to her, stitched her back together and filled her with stolen blood. Or maybe her keepers had access to better facilities.

 

Either way, Eve really hopes she isn't dead. She also really hopes that hoping that doesn't make her crazy.

 

Her stomach sinks when she considers the truth of what she’d done. Things had  _not_  gone to plan. She can't help but remember Villanelle's face twisting in pain, those clear eyes looking up at her with betrayal and fear held within them. Eve had imagined it differently. In her head it had unfolded with her stabbing Villanelle, Villanelle realising that she had underestimated Eve, Villanelle regarding her with respect, or maybe pride, Villanelle expressing as much with some witty quip before the colour drained from her face. It was meant to feel good. Final. Eve wasn't supposed to regret it nearly immediately, and Villanelle wasn't meant to  _cry_.

 

 _It could all be an act._  Eve tells herself, mustering up every shred of rationality left in her body to help herself sleep at night in her now-empty house.  _It could’ve been a ploy so she could make her escape. There's no way of knowing whether it was manipulation or truth. Maybe she doesn't even know what it is. It's obsession. And it's over._

 

\---

 

Of course, it's not over.

 

Eve realises, three glasses of red wine in one night, that she’s been pining a bit.  And not for the person she should be. Niko rarely enters her mind, and when he does it's only to feel guilty over how little she's thinking about him. She tries to convince herself it's an emotional hangover from being taken off the investigation—the puzzle not quite solved, a few doors yet to be unlocked before she reached the inner room she so desperately wanted to enter. But that wasn't the whole truth, of course.

 

The work had felt, one-sidedly, like a conversation between her and Villanelle—one that had now fallen into a silence that she felt keenly. She finds herself wishing that she could shine a symbol up in the sky and conjure her, tape an "X" in her window and backlight it with a lamp to get her here. But she knows she'll come to her eventually. For revenge, if for nothing else.

 

The silence breaks the next afternoon. A bunch of red roses arrives at her door, six flowers in all. There's no note, doesn't need to be. She knows who sent them, she stands on the porch in the drizzling rain looking at the bouquet and  _knows it_  from the sick sense of relief she feels. Confirmation that she survived. Confirmation that she’ll be back.

 

It makes her feel giddy, which makes her feel stupid, and terrified, and angry at herself. God, she couldn’t even have  _fun_  falling into some fucked up fatuous love affair with an incredibly dangerous woman, she had to be hyper-aware of how crazy the situation was, how stupid she was being at every step of the way. She wished that she could just see Villanelle again, and they could kill each other or kiss each other and that would be that. A fall, either way.  But she has to actually turn up for that to happen, and she’s been taking forever to appear.

 

The roses go in a glass vase in the centre of her kitchen table. It's too roomy for an arrangement of that size and they splay out in all directions when she takes away their brown paper fastenings. Later, in the dark, she tentatively googles flower meanings.

 

_Six roses: infatuation, or "I want to be yours"._

 

A petal falls. She turns it over in her fingertips, runs the downy surface of it over her cheek. She waits.

 

\---

 

She expects Villanelle to come at night. She sees flashes of her in her peripheral vision once the sun goes down, feels those keen eyes on her back when she locks the door before she goes to bed. Sometimes she goes walking in the trendier neighbourhoods and scans the bars, sees women with blonde hair and sure, striding gaits and tails them through crowds. But they’re all phantoms, she knows this. The real Villanelle exceeds expectation, breaks them.

 

So that’s why Eve isn’t totally surprised to find Villanelle lounging on her unmade bed mid-afternoon on a Sunday, looking slightly bedraggled but otherwise casual in an oversized sweater, leafing through one of Eve’s books.

 

“Did you know that serial killers are most likely to commit their first murder in their 20s? Forty-four percent. Interesting.”

 

“Hello, Oksana.”

 

Villanelle looks up from the book and waggles her fingers in a hello to Eve, smiling. One leg is propped up on the bed and the other dangles over the edge, bounces as she reads. She’s taken her shoes off.

 

As calmly as she can manage, Eve turns from Villanelle and opens her wardrobe to find her gun. She barely pushes the row of hung-up clothes aside to find the safe when she’s interrupted.

 

“Are you looking for this?”

 

Villanelle’s holding the grip of the pistol with her finger and thumb, letting it swing a little in midair.

 

“Yes.” Chills creep up her spine, tingle in her arms and legs. Her instincts tell her to run. “Are you going to kill me?”

 

“Don’t you remember my promise?” God, it’s been so long since Eve heard her voice. The purred ‘r’ in ‘promise’ makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

 

“I do. But I also remember what happened after.”

 

“So do I. You made it pretty impossible for me to forget it, no?”

 

“I—”

 

Villanelle sneezes, surprisingly high-pitched and with great flourish. “Sorry.” She sniffs. “I have a bit of a cold.”

 

She does sound sort of congested. It’s endearing, unfortunately. Maybe Eve will catch it from her. The thought is weirdly exciting, and Eve doesn’t question that too much. A more exciting thought is  _being_  the virus. Insinuating herself within Villanelle’s veins, facing off with her antibodies. How would it feel to go toe to toe with her on a cellular level?

 

“Did you get your flu shot? It’s going to be a rough season this year.”

 

Villanelle just looks at her. She’s gotten skinnier in the face since Eve last saw her, her cheeks less full. Her sweater falls off one shoulder and Eve finds herself riveted to previously unseen territory—Villanelle’s collarbone, and a heartbreaking glimpse of the smooth skin of her upper chest. She looks away.

 

“I  _stabbed_  you.” Eve says, to break the silence more than anything. She’s at a loss, ‘sorry’ doesn’t feel big enough, and doesn’t feel quite true—sure she felt sorry  _after_ , but certainly not in the moment. Before regret came crashing down on her, killing Villanelle had been what she wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

 

“You did. And it made me very angry. I don’t like being angry, I get headaches.” Villanelle swings her legs over the edge of the bed and stands in one fluid movement. “That’s why I stayed away from you.”

 

“Are you still angry?”

 

“Yes. And no. I don’t really know how I feel, to be honest.” Villanelle raises her arms and stretches extravagantly. If this level of honesty is new for her she doesn’t show it. “You surprised me.”

 

The truth of it hits Eve all at once, information gleaned from book after trashy book on human evil, murderers, people like the young woman standing in front of her.  _Psychopaths believe that they are more intelligent than others, and therefore the psychopath views himself as superior to his fellow man_. But she outfoxed the fox—and where did that put her now? Did Villanelle see her as an equal?

 

“Eve?”

 

“Sorry, what?”

 

“We were having a conversation and you stopped talking.”

 

“Oh, um.” She sighs, runs her fingers through her hair. Her heart kicks when she notices Villanelle follow the movement with unabashedly hungry eyes. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

 

“You don’t. But you don’t care, do you?”

 

Eve doesn’t acknowledge that.

 

“Look, I regret what I did. I don’t know why I regret it, because I shouldn’t, but I do. I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

 

For a fleeting moment Villanelle’s face softens, opens up like it had done before she told Eve that she thought about her, too. Just as fast, a crooked grin takes its place. She takes a step towards Eve.

 

“What would you have done instead?”

 

“Well, um, I—”

 

Eve’s saved by Villanelle’s bubbly ringtone. Villanelle holds up a finger and produces her phone from the back pocket of her fashionably ripped jeans.

 

“I have to take this. And I have to go. Please do not do anything stupid like let your team know that I’ve been here.”

 

“I won’t. I mean, I’m not even sure if there’s a team anymore.”

 

Oh, shit. Villanelle arches an eyebrow at that.

 

“I guess I have nothing to worry about then. Unless you’re planning on stabbing me again.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“I’m glad.” Villanelle smiles at her with a hollow pleasantness that chills Eve to the bone. Eve watches as she toes on her shoes, not bothering to untie the laces. “Bye for now, Eve Polastri.”

 

Before Eve can even consider asking her to stay Villanelle has crossed the room. She deftly climbs out of the window, an acrobat running her own circus. Eve hears the drainpipe rattling against the brick and the crunch of gravel below. Something like disappointment sinks deep into Eve’s bones, sits heavy on her shoulders. Giving into the weight, she lies down in the centre of the bed, rolls over so her face is buried in the pillow Villanelle had been resting on. She breathes deep, and it does absolutely nothing to calm her racing heart.

 

\---

 

She spends the next few days overthinking everything about the encounter. She runs through it again and again, plays it on an endless loop. She doesn’t sleep. She wanders into a grocery store intent on buying food and finds herself standing in the aisle, staring at cans of soup, thinking about the glint in Villanelle’s eyes when she asked her “What would you have done instead?”.

 

Eve had been asking herself that same question quite a lot. Particularly late at night, with her hand shoved down her pyjama pants and shame twisting in her chest. It’s always about that day in Paris. Sometimes pictures scenarios where Villanelle would grab her by the wrist so hard that it grinds her bones together, to get her to drop the knife before climbing on top of her. Sometimes these scenarios end with Eve getting the blade to the belly. Other times Villanelle would lean in and kiss her hard, build a desperate friction between them and fuck Eve until she couldn’t see.

 

 _I know what I’m doing_. Eve didn’t need to hear that to know that Villanelle would be good in bed. Everything about her—her wiry strength, her total lack of inhibitions, her gleeful brutality. Even the way she spoke, the way her tongue flicked over certain consonants. Although Eve had definitely thought about all of that directed at herself, images of Villanelle writhing and helpless underneath her were the ones which appeared unbidden most often.

 

Maybe it was because she’d seen it before.

 

One evening, after a particularly trying day at work, she’s met with the heady smell of something roasting in the oven when she opens the door. It smells  _delicious_ , like rendering fat and citrus, and fear grips her as she rounds the corner. She picks up an umbrella from the hatstand and brandishes it like a sword.

 

“ _Jesus_ , Oksana.” Eve says, putting a hand over her racing heart. Her nerves were shot these days.

 

“I thought I’d make you dinner!”

 

Villanelle, inconveniently, looks fantastic. She’s wearing  _overalls_  for god’s sake, and her hair is twisted up into the sort of effortless loose bun that makes Eve burn with envy (and something  _else_ , something that makes her want to see Villanelle undo it and shake her hair free in slow motion). She finds herself unable to look away from the bare curve of Villanelle’s hip, peeking out between black denim and the peachy fabric of her long-sleeved crop-top.

 

“How did you get in here?”

 

“I had a key made.”

 

“You  _what_?”

 

Villanelle rifles around in front pocket of her potentially designer overalls and produces a key, offering it to Eve on her outstretched palm. “Have the locks changed if you want to. You should probably know a good window repairman if you do, though.”

 

Eve sighs. Villanelle grins and turns back to the stove. When she gives the pan a shake the contents sizzle nicely. Whatever’s in there smells equally as fantastic as whatever’s in the oven. She looks over Villanelle’s shoulder and spies potatoes gleaming with butter, tossed with translucent onions and sprigs of thyme. Eve’s stomach rumbles mutinously. Her heart is betraying her too, having jumped not just from being startled by Villanelle but by that same stupid giddiness that seems to accompany any sight of the woman.

 

“You look tense. Would you like a glass of wine?”

 

Eve regards her warily. It’s been a while since she’d eaten something that didn’t come with microwave directions on the box. She can see through the little domestic game Villanelle’s playing at, the effort to jar her into intimacy like she’d done the first time she broke in with dinner on her mind. It reads like a trap, but Eve figures that avoiding death at Villanelle’s hands is as futile as avoiding death in general. If she really cared she would’ve moved to fucking Antarctica or something by now.

 

The food is appealing. And the wine. And, begrudgingly, the company. It’s not conventional. But then again, what about this was?

 

“You take a sip first.”

 

Villanelle flashes her a smile and takes a generous swig right from the mouth of the bottle.

 

“Satisfied?”

 

Eve nods. Villanelle pours.

 

“Merlot goes well with duck.”

 

“I’ll take your word for it.”

 

Villanelle is mercifully silent during dinner, perhaps sensing Eve’s threadbare patience for verbal acrobatics. She’s a messy eater—holds the fork overhand, occasionally uses her fingers to pick up morsels and licks them clean after, wipes her mouth on the heel of her palm. There’s a drop of sticky, perfectly reduced orange sauce on the front of her shirt that’ll probably leave a stain. Eve is fascinated with it all despite herself. There’s such a contrast between Villanelle’s refined features and her lack of table manners. She’s utterly unselfconscious, as always.

 

“Are you finished?” Villanelle asks.

 

Eve looks down at her plate to find it empty. “Uh, yes. Thank you. That was delicious. Really delicious, actually.”

 

Villanelle beams at her.

 

“Where did you learn to cook like that?”

 

“Oh, living in Paris you pick up bits and pieces. Especially when you’re fucking three students at the Cordon Bleu.”

 

Eve’s mouth drops open in shock and Villanelle rolls her eyes.

 

“It is a joke, Eve. I like the cooking channel. Nigella Lawson, especially.” Villanelle does something impressive with her eyebrows and wolf-whistles. Eve’s turn to roll her eyes.

 

“You’ve got quite the type, don’t you?” Wait, did she just say that? And in that tone? It must be the wine talking for her, but Villanelle doesn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite, really. She relaxes back into her chair and angles towards Eve, posture open and mischief shining in her eyes.

 

“Maybe I do. Can you blame me?”

 

Eve realises with distant alarm that she’s being seduced. Dinner, drinking, the hushed quality to Villanelle’s voice tonight that makes her want to get closer. Although, can you really be seduced if you were already masturbating about your seducer on a nightly basis? It's not like she had any intention to turn it into reality, though, because Villanelle's a killer, Villanelle's her target, Villanelle...

 

...has been steadily walking her fingers up Eve's thigh while this internal war has been waging.

 

Eve scrambles up and away from her, wine glass in hand. “You can’t do that.” She does a nervous lap of the living room before plonking down heavily in the armchair.

 

"Do what?" Villanelle asks, affecting an innocent expression.

 

"Touch me like that. Touch me, at all."

 

“Why not?” Villanelle stands from the table and makes her way to Eve with leonine, predatory grace. Eve swallows hard.

 

“You’re a murderer, for one. This could all be a ploy to get me vulnerable and kill me.”

 

“Eve, you  _are_  vulnerable. I can think of ten ways I could kill you without even leaving this room. I could strangle you, or break your neck, or shatter this coffee table and use a shard of glass to—”

 

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Normally she’d jump at the chance to hear more about how Villanelle’s mind works, but they were getting off track. She racks her brain for more reasons instead.

 

“I’m still married.”

 

“You are separated. You’re not in a committed relationship anymore. The marriage thing is just a formality.” Villanelle waves her hand dismissively. She takes a seat on the couch at right angles to Eve. “And if that’s the only thing getting in our way I can easily make it...not a problem anymore.”

 

“No! Please, don’t.”

 

Villanelle shrugs. “Up to you. So what else?”

 

“Um...uh…you’re twenty-six! That’s  _way_  too young for me. I’m a good twenty years older than you, I-I could be your mother!” She’s babbling. She can hear how crazy she sounds. “It would be taking advantage.”

 

“Oh would it now?” If the challenging look on Villanelle’s face is anything to go by, it would be anything but taking advantage.

 

“Yes. Yes, it would.”

 

“You know what I think about all that?”

 

“What?”

 

“I think it’s  _bullshit_.”

 

“But it’s true!”

 

“True or not, it is still bullshit. Besides,” Villanelle plants her elbow on the arm of the couch and leans her head against her hand, gives Eve a winning smile. “You like it when I touch you."

 

"You don't know that."

 

"You do. You liked it when I touched you on my bed, even if you hurt me afterwards. And I held your hand once. That was nice." She offers her hand to Eve. "Do you like holding hands?"

 

She leans forward in the chair, reaches out and slips her hand into Villanelle's, as if they were first meeting. It’s perfectly rational—Villanelle wants to hold hands, and Villanelle is a dangerous psychopathic murderer. It’s in Eve’s best interest to keep her happy if she wants to survive, of course. The other woman interlinks their fingers and her smile grows.

 

It would all be so easy.

 

Eve lets go, reaches for her glass of merlot instead and takes a long drink.

 

"When you were in my bed I thought you wanted to have sex with me." Villanelle says, inspecting her nails nonchalantly. "Did you?" 

 

Eve chokes on the mouthful of wine, glares at a laughing Villanelle while she coughs.

 

"You can't be serious."

 

"I can. Sometimes. Did you?"

 

A beat. _Of course I did._

 

"I...don't want to answer that."

 

Villanelle smiles, a little devious, clearly pleased with what lies beneath Eve's omission. "You don't have to."

 

Eve's head throbs. She watches as Villanelle gets up and walks to her, sits cross-legged on the floor a safe distance away, and looks up at her with that potent, probing gaze.

 

"I think you still want to have sex with me."

 

Eve can't help her sharp intake of breath, even knowing how much of a tell it is.

 

She half-expects Villanelle to give her another victorious smile having caught her out. She doesn't. Her face is open—there's playfulness in her eyes, but no malice. And there's an edge, too, one that Eve recognises instantly as wanting. It hits her straight between the thighs. "Do you still want to have sex with me?”

 

Eve groans and shuts her eyes, tips her head back against the chair and slouches down. "I don't know what I want."

 

She barely hears Villanelle move, but then there's weight over her hips, and heat, and when she opens her eyes Villanelle is  _there_ , straddling her.

 

"You don't?"

 

"Oh Jesus."

 

Villanelle laughs. She smells good up close. Really good, like Niko's fancy going-out cologne only smoother, more expensive. The scent had lingered for days after that night in her kitchen. That and the phantom feel of a knife-tip against her chest.

 

Eve's totally frozen, holding the arms of the chair in a white-knuckle grip. Villanelle, for her part, is smiling serenely, sitting straight-backed in Eve's lap with her hands resting behind her back. Inviting, but non-threatening. As non-threatening as a woman who kills for a living can be.

 

"So." She says, and bursts out into giggles. "Eve what is with this face!" She imitates an exaggerated version Eve's terrified expression and laughs again. "It's okay, you know. Here."

 

Villanelle takes hold of both of Eve's hands and brings them to rest on her thighs. Her eyes are clear and wide, jovial but not mocking. "You can touch me. You don't have to, but you might like it. I think you will like it."

 

"Oh, God." She likes it. The denim of Villanelle’s overalls is warm against her palms. Eve can feel the potential of strength underneath, can feel how hard the muscles in Villanelle's legs are even without her flexing them. It reminds her of the ease with which Villanelle had tossed her against the fridge, as if she weighed nothing. She likes all of it.

 

"Mm." Villanelle says, as if she agrees.

 

She especially likes the tension she can feel coiled in Villanelle the higher up she touches her, like she's barely keeping herself restrained. Lack of control from a psychopath should be terrifying, and there is fear within Eve but it's burnt up by the desire rushing through her, pushed to the back of her mind. She wants to see how far she can build that tension before it breaks. Villanelle can conjure tears and laughter and convincing cover stories, but there are some things she can't fake.

 

“Mm.” Villanelle says again, a small noise from the back of her throat brought out by the press of Eve’s thumbs against her hip bones.

 

Giving in to curiosity, she scratches lightly over the exposed skin on Villanelle’s sides that had caught her eye when she first saw her making dinner, gasping when she feels Villanelle’s knees tighten on either side of her legs in response. Villanelle could spin lie after lie, but her body is unfailingly honest.

 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

 

“I can’t believe you’re doing this either.” Villanelle slips the straps of the overalls off her shoulders, lets the bib fall, and oh my  _god_. She’s definitely not wearing a bra under that sinfully tight shirt. Eve’s mouth waters. She trails her fingertips around to Villanelle’s lower stomach, digs into the softtness there to feel hard muscle underneath. Villanelle’s sharp intake of breath hisses through her clenched teeth.

 

“Higher.” She says, her voice tense.

 

Eve nods. She wants to see the scar. She wants to see everything. She wants Villanelle bare and hot before her, wants to see more of those shades of need that are cast over Villanelle’s eyes right now instead of the usual boldness.

 

Just as Eve brushes the hem of Villanelle’s shirt, the doorbell rings.

 

“Shit.” Villanelle says, half-falling off of Eve’s lap and tripping over her own feet trying to stand. “Fuck. Who is that?”

 

“I don’t know.” Eve says, dazed. The last fifteen minutes had been bewitched, under a spell. Her cheeks burn. “You should go.”

 

Villanelle nods, looks Eve up and down quickly before dashing down the hallway to the back door.

 

The neighbour on her front step rants at her about her overflowing garbage bins and she hears none of it, just the thudding of her own heart in her ears. When he leaves she grabs her coat and goes for a long walk, hoping to see Villanelle skulking around the street or picking up late night pide at the kebab shop a few blocks away. Her search is fruitless but the night air cools her overheated body to the point where sleep seems like a possibility again. That is, if she can shake the memory of tonight for long enough, if the afterimage of Villanelle's eyes fluttering shut at the feel of skin on skin fades.

 

She comes home. There’s a note waiting for her, in the centre of the now-clear dining table. The kitchen is immaculate, maybe cleaner than it was when she had left that morning.

 

“It would be rude of me to leave you with all these dishes. See you soon, baby. X”

 

She doesn’t sleep that night. Instead of gore and heartbreak she thinks about the warmth of Villanelle’s body, thinks about her tall frame in front of her kitchen sink, soap on her wet forearms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we earn our e-rating in chapter 2 so stay tuned lol, thanks for reading! any comments much appreciated :-)


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for waiting, enjoy!

It’s another week until she sees Villanelle again. Eve keeps herself busy, designating certain hours in the day to think about her recent encounter with Villanelle so she doesn’t bankrupt herself with the hot water bill or swerve into traffic by accident.

 

She cooks. She’s never been good at it, slightly better at baking but lacking the patience and the intuition that would make any of her meals rise above mediocrity. She tries to cook duck, but the sugary marinade chars to a crisp and the middle stays pink and inedible. She throws the carcasse into the garbage with a little too much force, the bin tipping and spilling over the kitchen tiles. She laughs.

 

She meets Elena for a beer. It’s been a while since they met up, but they fall into the same easy banter that took the edge off long workdays in Eve’s past life.They avoid talking about Villanelle, pointedly, until they’re both a few drinks in.

 

“How does it feel, you know, stabbing someone?” Elena mimes a _Psycho_ -style overhand jab and Eve takes a long swig of her beer.

 

“Fucking terrifying.” Eve says, meaning it. She leaves out how it was electrifying, how she knew at once that knife over gun was the right choice. It was always going to be like that. Any gun in Eve’s hands was never a threat to Villanelle - a gun would be too quick, too final, too impersonal. Polar opposite to the sweet, easy slide of the knife into Villanelle’s belly, so much more involved than the simple pull of a trigger. The movement of it started in the shoulder, hinged at the elbow, tied to the blade with her fist. No empty space between them to be traversed by a bullet, connected instead by nerve, muscle, joint. The outside edge of Eve’s index finger and the tip of her thumb brushed against Villanelle’s sweater as she sunk the blade in.

 

“Was there...was there a lot of blood?”

 

Eve smiles. She and Elena, cut from the same cloth.

 

“More than you can imagine.”

 

Elena studies her with a careful eye, a smile ghosting around her mouth. “And you’ve seen her again, yeah?”

 

Eve’s stomach drops. “How do you know that?”

 

Elena’s eyes widen, and she grins brilliantly.

 

“What?”

 

“I was just bullshitting! I had no idea I’d be right, oh my god. I’m too good.”

 

Eve lets herself be relieved that Elena isn’t phoning in the cavalry to come take Eve away for harbouring a fugitive. She sees long hours of interrogation rooms and uncomfortable chairs, weak cups of tea and two-way mirrors. She knows it well enough, having been on the other side. But Elena doesn’t seem freaked out, or suspicious. She seems a little awed.

 

“So have you fucked her yet?” Elena throws out casually and Eve coughs, feels the sting of carbonation at the back of her throat as her beer threatens to go down the wrong way.

 

“No, Elena, I haven’t _fucked_ her yet, Jesus Christ.”

 

“So-rry.” Elena rolls her eyes. “Are you going to?”

 

Eve glares at her.

 

“Because you should, she’s hot. Seems like she’d be a properly good ride, too. Niko always seemed like a bit of a dud, was he?”

 

“Alright, alright, that’s enough.”

 

Elena, unphased, raises her eyebrows like she’s expecting an answer.

 

“Niko was...fine, in bed. We had sex all the time.”

 

“Sure, if you say so.”

 

“You’re a dick.”

 

“And what about the girl?”

 

Eve looks Elena right in the eye and lies through her teeth. “I have no interest in having sex with Oksana Astankova.”

 

Elena downs the rest of her glass, nods as she swallows. She turns to Eve.

 

“You’re so full of shit.”

 

\---

 

Eve’s slightly buzzed when she gets home. Not buzzed enough to fall asleep in her clothes, but too tired to shower even though she got rained on and there’s cigarette smoke from the outside of the bar clinging to her. She’s putting on her pyjamas and considering taking up smoking again when she hears the drainpipe rattle outside.

 

“Oh, fuck.”

 

Villanelle’s bedraggled face appears at her bedroom window. She plants a hand on the glass and urges the window up and open, clamours through and performs a neat and wholly unnecessary somersault once she’s clear of the frame. She’s got a small backpack slung over her shoulder. She’s covered in blood.

 

“It’s not mine. I need to use your shower.”

 

“I—uh—”

 

“Where are your towels?”

 

“Left side of the closet, up the top.”

 

“Thank you. I’ll only be a minute.”

 

Villanelle takes close to half an hour in the bathroom. In the meantime Eve sits on her bed and tries to get her hands to stop shaking, contemplates the likelihood of some sort of once in a decade alignment of the planets occurring in the sky outside. Only that could explain this, what’s about to happen, only a massive and rare cosmic shift. An eclipse. A meteor shower. There has to be a bigger power at work contriving Villanelle’s presence in her life, for giving them a night and a bed, for putting them side by side in a hospital bathroom all those months ago. God maybe, or the Devil. Regardless, there’s a heaviness to tonight, a current in the air that has nothing to do with the storm simmering quietly above. It settles low in Eve, raises goosebumps up on her arms.

 

Villanelle emerging from the en suite plays out with the same absurd sensuality that would’ve accompanied an appearance of Aphrodite among mortals. She’s flanked by steam, golden and vital in the haunted drabness of Eve’s bedroom. She’s wet from her shower. And she’s wearing pink.

 

“Strange that you have this bathroom as well as the one with the tub. Do you not like brushing your teeth beside your husband?”

 

She leans her forearm against the doorframe and drops her hip, all teasing, self-parodying coquettishness. How many men have seen her as the Bond girl? How many men have taken this act without irony before she ended their lives? The thought of it makes Eve laugh.

 

“What? What’s funny?”

 

“You don’t do things by halves, do you?”

 

Villanelle looks down at herself. Her robe is silk, coloured like the centre of a carnation. It falls to mid thigh and stops.

 

“Nope.” She says, popping the ‘p’. “I don’t.”

 

Smirking, she unties the sash and lets the robe cascade off her shoulders.

 

Eve wishes she were drunker. Villanelle’s not naked, thank god, not _yet_ , but the lingerie she’s wearing is designed to be taken off. The soft cups of the bra are triangle shaped and the same shade as the robe, and the panties match, flimsy and thin at the sides. Sheer. Eve stares at Villanelle’s nipples, at the shadowy suggestion of hair between her legs, stricken by both.

 

“You have a tattoo.” She does. A snake curled around a rose, starting at her sternum and ending just above her navel. There’s an unsettling quality to its intricate coils. Beautiful and fearsome. A writhing thing.

 

“Oh this?” Villanelle touches her fingertips to the head of the serpent. “This is temporary. I just put it on, in your bathroom. I got it from the junk shop.”

 

Eve scoffs weakly. “Where did you _actually_ get it?”

 

“Prison. With a pin. It took six hours and the infection after gave me a fever for five days.” Eve imagines her, clammy and thin in her prison clothes, tossing on a hard bed. Villanelle looks down, into the serpent’s eyes. “You certainly put your little twist on it, yes?”

 

Eve only now sees it, really, having been hidden by some sort of hysterical blind spot until directly referred to. Her wound, their wound. It’s red, recently unstitched as far as she can tell. There are dimples from where sutures must have gone around the edge. It runs angry through the stem of the rose. Her right hand tingles.

 

“I’m sorry.” Eve says, swallowing the thickness in her throat. “I’ve ruined it.”

 

“It’s ok.” Villanelle waves nonchalantly, as if Eve had scratched her car in a parking complex and not attempted to eviscerate her. “Didn’t cost me much.”

 

“How much did it cost?”

 

“I made a shiv, took me a couple of weeks or so.” Villanelle grins, switches from casual to rakish in less than a second. “And Olga got to spend the night with me.”

 

“Got to?”

 

She shrugs, self-satisfied. “What can I say? I was highly sought after.”

 

 _I know what I’m doing_. Oh, it would be good. Eve knows. It would be better than ten minutes of perfunctory head from Niko. It would soar above the typical orgasm she rubs herself to with him gritting his teeth below her. It would change her. She would shift in ways impossible to predict without actually experiencing it. She has the distinct impression that the sex might kill her, the power of it. That is if Villanelle doesn’t decide to do that herself.

 

“Can I...can I see it up close?”

 

Eve isn’t sure whether she’s asking about the tattoo or the scar. It seems like Villanelle isn’t sure either, by the narrowing of her eyes. She saunters over all the same, clearly enjoying having the upper hand and quite comfortable this close to nudity. She’s all solid, lush womanhood. Built for a cruel Russian winter and softened by Parisian summers. A tendril of steam rises from her shoulder.

 

“How is that?”

 

Villanelle stands right in front of Eve, the tattoo at her eye level. The scent of her makes Eve dizzy, as does the sensational heat rolling off her body. She smells expensive - bergamot and frankincense and heady, concentrated rose. Eve’s struck with the magic of her.

 

“That’s…” Eve touches the bloom of the flower, drags her fingertips down to the end of the stem. Villanelle twitches, either from a catch in her breath or a ticklish reflex, and when Eve looks up her expression is dark and unreadable. “Innocent flower?”

 

Villanelle grins. “And the serpent underneath.”

 

“I had no idea Shakespeare was on the curriculum in the gulag.”

 

A laugh. “It wasn’t. Anna had a soft-spot for him. Especially the sonnets. I like the comedies better, but Macbeth is good.”

 

There’s a curious twinge in Eve at the mention of Anna. Regret? That she couldn’t save the woman’s life? _Not_ jealousy. Surely not.

 

“What am I doing?” Eve says, and barely resists leaning her forehead against Villanelle’s stomach, which looks _soft_.

 

“You’re about to have mind-blowing sex with a serial killer who’s old enough to be your daughter.” Villanelle says matter-of-factly, parroting Eve’s objections from the other night.

 

“Shut up.” Eve says, leaning back on her hands to get a better look at Villanelle’s face. “You’re not a serial killer.”

 

“I’m not?”

 

“Have you killed anyone who wasn't a target, apart from Anna’s husband?”

 

“Yes. Sometimes there's witnesses.”

 

Eve thinks back to unspeakable gore of the hospital room.

 

“Right. I don’t think that makes you a serial killer though. Do you, um,” A thrill rises in Eve at the thought of being able to ask all of this, not dissimilar to the one she feels at the sight of Villanelle’s nipples straining against the gauzy fabric of her bra. Something about exposure, or discovery. “Do you _need_ to kill? Do you find yourself craving it?”

 

Villanelle steps back and considers this, cocking her head and looking up at Eve’s ceiling with her hands on her hips. “I mean, I love my job. And I get bored if I don't have work to do. But I wouldn't say that I...crave it, exactly.”

 

Eve nods, forming her next question for a moment before Villanelle cuts in.

 

“The only thing I _really_ crave is sex.”

 

The look she gives Eve is teasing seduction turned all the way up. It’s bravado, and it makes her _angry_ because she doesn’t want it to be about that, she doesn’t want Villanelle to coast through this like she’s another conquest.

 

“God, just, just come here.”

 

Without hesitation Villanelle moves to Eve and kneels in front of her legs, places her hands on Eve’s hips.

 

“Better?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She feels melting and pliant and drowsy with Villanelle this close. It would be so easy to sink into her like a hot bath, submerge herself in Villanelle’s riptide and let it drag her under.

 

“Are we going to kiss or what?” Villanelle asks, so close now that Eve can feel her breath. Her voice is teasing, gentle. Barely above a whisper.

 

“I’m-I’m working my way up to it.” She traces Villanelle’s collarbone. Her bare shoulder is a revelation, and Eve touches it with all the sacredness that such a revelation deserves.

 

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes.” She is, but whatever’s about to happen feels inevitable. It feels _earned_ , the last year has been shit and she deserves this, deserves to let this firebrand of a woman to fuck her into oblivion, deserves to _take_ for once rather than hesitate.

 

Villanelle smiles, starts to say something. Maybe ‘don’t be’ or ‘good’. Eve cuts her off.

 

“Are _you_ nervous?”

 

Villanelle’s smile fades, replaced by that same unreadable look from before. She picks up Eve’s hand and places it on the flat of her chest, presses her hand firmly over top of it. Part of Eve expects to feel nothing, but there it is - proof that she’s human, proof that she feels. The pounding of her heart, quick like a rabbit’s under her palm.

 

“Oh.” Eve says, and then she’s being kissed.

 

And _god_ , it’s good. It’s fast and hungry and artless, but so maddeningly _good_ that it makes her toes curl, makes her press her thighs together. It’s giving in, giving over. Her head swims and Villanelle is everywhere, sucking on her bottom lip and scratching her scalp and licking into her mouth, moaning at the contact. Villanelle grabs her hips and tugs her forward, and Eve wraps her legs around her middle and grinds against her.

 

There’s long minutes of just that, slipping into a dangerous, fathomless pace. This is better than casefiles, better than all but breaking into Villanelle’s apartment and trashing her beautiful things, better than the ravenous shapes of her that’ve flooded Eve’s dreams since that day in the hospital. Villanelle grips Eve’s jaw, squeezes so her mouth drops open, and rolls her tongue in so deep and dirty that Eve feels a phantom echo of it in her cunt. Then she pulls away.

 

“You’re wearing too many clothes. I want to get you naked.”

 

Villanelle starts on the buttons of her pyjama shirt with single-minded intent. Eve’s mesmerised by it—Villanelle’s fingers are intelligent and swift, fingers with a death toll. There’s somewhat of a snap back to reality when she gets to the button between her breasts.

 

“Wait, hold on, I’m not wearing any underwear.”

 

“Ooh, sexy of  you.”

 

“I was ready for bed, nothing sexy about it.”

 

“I disagree.” Villanelle looks down to where Eve’s holding her shirt together. “So...do you want me to turn around so you can put some on, or?”

 

“What? No, I just…” Eve’s train of thought careens off the tracks. “It’s just fast. We’re skipping a couple of bases here.”

 

“Bases? Are you going to ask me to ‘go steady’ next?” Villanelle affects a perfect, precocious Valley Girl accent for the second question.

 

Her lips are buzzing from the kiss. She realises that she’s fooled herself into thinking that taking her clothes off would be the point at which this became irrevocable, as if the slide of Villanelle’s tongue over her own hadn’t sent her plummeting down into a place where she couldn’t come back from. She shrugs her shirt off.

 

“There.” She tries not to shrink. It’s hard, with Villanelle looking at her like a starved lion confronted with a trussed-up gazelle. Villanelle reaches out and touches feather-light over her ribs, thumbs the undersides of her breasts and makes her shiver.

 

“This is my favourite part on a woman.” Villanelle says, brushing the soft part of her belly just below her navel. “We’re going to get to know each other very well.”

 

It’s easy to imagine Villanelle fucking her with her hand this close to the waistband of her pyjamas, just a few inches higher than where she actually wants her. Villanelle moves up instead, drags her thumbs over her nipples, and when Eve shifts on the bed she finds herself shockingly wet.

 

“Can I take off your pants?”

 

Instead of nodding, Eve stands. She unties the drawstring and lets her pants fall, watching Villanelle’s face and hoping that some effect of her brazenness registers there. But before she can even step out of them Villanelle’s hands are on her ass and her mouth is _on_ her, licking and sucking and not letting up.

 

“Jesus!” Eve jerks forward in surprise, curls over with the force of it, her hands planted on Villanelle’s shoulders to keep herself upright. The touch of Villanelle’s tongue to the hood of her clit is a lit match meeting gasoline. She roils with pleasure, swoons, loses every bit of air from her body.

 

“You’re crazy.”

 

Villanelle smiles up at her, face slick and shining. “Told you I was good.”

 

“Shut up. Come here.”

 

Maybe for the first time in her life, Villanelle does what she’s told. She palms Eve’s breasts, smiling like a madwoman before guiding her back onto the bed. Within seconds Villanelle’s face is pressed hard against her again, mouth sealed over her clit and tongue working relentlessly.

 

Breathing heavy, she threads her fingers through Villanelle’s damp hair. She doesn’t miss the way Villanelle’s movements falter when she pulls. She’s bursting at the seams, tight with pleasure all over. Eve gives in to the instinct to raise her hips up, pressure against pressure, and feels the curve of Villanelle’s smile in response, feels the vibration of her moan right down to her marrow.

 

And then it’s gone.

 

“What? What are you doing?”

 

Villanelle’s on her back, looking more serene than Eve’s ever seen her. “Come here.”

 

Eve straddles her waist. Villanelle smiles like there’s a joke Eve isn’t privy to.

 

“Not there,” Villanelle says, taking hold of Eve’s thighs and pulling her up, towards her face. Villanelle’s lip curls in anticipation. “Here.”

 

“Oh.” _Oh_.

 

She comes like that, twice and then a third that surprises her, grinding into Villanelle’s face and gripping her hair, enthralled by the shimmering hunger in those wide, changeable eyes. Never like this, never. Always some puzzle to solve, lots of directions given and time spent teetering on a frustrated edge painfully aware of how close or far off she was. Villanelle’s hot mouth makes pleasure bolt through her like a wild horse.

 

Eve draws back after the third, sensitive and shaky through her legs. Villanelle, panting, wipes at her own face and licks her fingers clean. Not showy, not teasing. Practical. Not a single drop wasted.

 

Eve throbs and throbs.

 

“I want to make you do that ten thousand times.” Villanelle says when she’s cleaned up, rounding on Eve like a predator again. She puts her hands on Eve and holds her close, lies them both down and presses her thigh between Eve’s legs. “I need to.”

 

Eve searches her eyes. “You really are a romantic, aren’t you?”

 

“Only now you realise this, Eve Polastri of the MI6?” ‘Re-a-lise’ she says, three syllables from the word in her musical diction.

 

“Are you saying my observation skills need some work?”

 

“I’m saying that I’ve been wooing you for months.”

 

Desire flares in Eve, and a confusing curl of affection too. She leans up and kisses Villanelle senseless, or senseless enough to be able to flip them so _she_ can be the one whose thigh has an agenda.

 

“That was tricky.” Villanelle says. Eve says nothing, just reaches under her to unclasp her bra and take it off.

 

“Oh my god. Oh my god.”

 

“Are they everything you dreamed?” Villanelle smiles up at her wryly, brings her arms up above her head, luxuriating. _Ale decha_ says a voice from the past.

 

“You’re a show-off, too.” Eve gets her hands on Villanelle’s tits and keeps them there for a few long, hedonistic moments. Like a magnet, though, she’s drawn to the scar. She skirts her fingertips around the edges, looks to Villanelle in askance and sees nothing but stormy desire in response.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.”

 

She lets herself touch it. It’s a different kind of smooth to the rest of Villanelle. It’s new, after all, the cells alive with the urge to knit back together. As soon as she makes contact with it’s as if she’s been shocked, an urgency sparking in her. Without hesitation she cups Villanelle over her underwear, and Villanelle’s answering moan catches in her throat.

 

“I don’t know how good I’ll be at this.”

 

“You don’t have to.” Villanelle says, a slight tremor in her voice as Eve touches the insides of her thighs with unsteady hands, already feeling the warmth radiating from her. “Really Eve, you don’t have—"

 

Both of them gasp when Eve slips her fingers into Villanelle’s underwear and steals them through the wet heat she finds there.

 

“God, you’re—”

 

“I know.”

 

Villanelle covers her face with her hands and whines. Eve knows in an instant that this isn’t a side of Villanelle seen often—there’s no facade here, no disguises or lies. Just the honesty of her body, the fact of her need.

  
“Look at me.” Eve slips two fingers inside Villanelle who cries out from behind her hands. “Look at me.”

 

Villanelle grips Eve’s shoulders, moves her hands up to weave into her hair and cradle her face. Eve mirrors it with her own free hand, strokes down the delicate curve of Villanelle’s cheekbone, looks into those desperate eyes until the other woman looks away, closes them and turns her head into Eve’s touch.

 

“Another. Please, another.” Villanelle’s voice is raw, shaky around the edges. Eve couldn’t say no to anything when asked like that. She goes slowly, both of them feeling the stretch. Villanelle shifts up to her elbows to watch, open-mouthed.

 

“Oh my God.” Eve says. “Oksana.”

 

Villanelle moans in response, tipping her head back so Eve can see the muscles flexing in her neck. There’s a dizzy charge to it all, one that makes her sit back on her haunches a little and take a deep breath before starting to move inside her, still slow, as slow as she can possibly go. Villanelle falls silent.

 

“Oksana,” Eve begins, meaning to ask her if she’s okay, to remind her to breathe, but then Villanelle looks up at her, and like a miracle there’s tears in her eyes, overflowing and running down the smooth plane of her cheek.

 

Something passes between them. They’ve been here before. Eve bent over Villanelle, buried inside her, liquid heat spilling out of Villanelle's body onto Eve’s hand. Villanelle, shocked and awed, face twisting with ecstasy instead of agony, or maybe it’s both this time. Maybe it was both then, too.

 

Deja vu hits Eve like a wave, and she sees it hit Villanelle too. Eve watches, transfixed, as Villanelle reaches down and takes hold of her wrist, completing the reprise. Eve would never think of withdrawing this time. This time she could keep going, and to keep going would be to break Villanelle open in a different way, to create rather than destroy.

 

“Fuck me, please. Please.”

 

“Okay, yeah, okay.”

 

Villanelle writhes underneath her and thrusts in counterpoint to Eve’s fingers, strokes up the length of Eve’s arm like she can’t believe what it’s doing to her. The feel of her is incredible, tight and hot and open for Eve alone. She’s loud and unrestrained, clings to Eve desperately when she comes and traps Eve’s wrist with her shaking thighs.

 

“Do you want me to stop?”

 

“No, no, please. Please don’t stop.”

 

She doesn’t, fucks Villanelle until her arm is aching and barely under her control anymore. Still, Villanelle begs for more. She sinks to her knees on her bedroom floor and pulls Villanelle’s hips flush against the edge of the bed, doesn’t think and lets instinct take over and tastes her with a focused indulgence she’s never come close to during sex with anyone else. It’s addictive, narcotic, everything about it, and just as she’s thinking about how she could do this forever Villanelle’s pushing weakly at her face, saying “Enough, enough,” in a broken voice.

 

She stands. Villanelle, beneath her, is panting and shining with sweat, one arm resting over her eyes. She looks debauched, vulnerable in a way that makes something in Eve twist, makes her want to jump right back in and make her come ten more times. She leans down and kisses her instead, sweet, sucks hard at her already swollen bottom lip and covers Villanelle with her weight. The woman beneath her pulls back and draws a serious breath, as if gearing up for some major declaration. Eve watches her face.

 

“How...where did you learn to eat pussy like that?”

 

Eve laughs, full-bodied, blushes in spite of herself. She rolls over onto her back and curls against Villanelle’s side to murmur into her ear. “Maybe my observation skills were better than you thought.” She runs the tip of her tongue down the curve of it, grasps the simple gold hoop fitted through in her earlobe and tugs gently. Villanelle shivers, mouth falling open.

 

“Maybe you’re right.”

 

In profile she takes Eve’s breath away. She traces the slope of Villanelle’s nose with light fingertips, does the same for the full swell of her lips, the cherubic round of her chin, her graceful neck.

 

“I tried so hard not to want this.”

 

Villanelle turns to look at her, gaze flicking from eyes to mouth and back.

 

“And now?”

 

Villanelle’s face is luminous in the lamplight, flushed and bare. Eve expected the sex, felt it clawing at her for months, but not this. A dawning. Complicated and maybe impossible, but there. She leans in close to Villanelle, smooths her hair from her face like she had done to Eve on her bed in Paris so long ago.

 

“Do you wanna watch a movie?”

 

Villanelle smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think @ [my tumblr](http://weirddyke.tumblr.com/)!


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